growing up in Caracas in the 1950s, my university complex had a giant Alexander Calder sculpture hanging from a ceiling, and going to school I’d see modern designs all over. It became part of my DNA, and I think that started my eye for abstraction. My husband and I started collecting because we had all these artists and art around us. Gradually we saw a thread that connected the works of art we’d been buying, and it was abstraction. It’s always been more of our focus than the figurative art. Everyone knows the Mexican muralists, but until recently not everyone knew about abstract artists like Jesús Rafael Soto or Hélio Oiticica.